The International Day of Forests is celebrated on March 21, which was established by the UN General Assembly to draw attention to the issues of rational use of these natural resources. The main theme in 2024 is “Forests and Innovations: New solutions for a better world”. Forests purify water and air, contribute to maintaining the temperature of the planet and help absorb carbon, and play an important role in preserving biodiversity and ecosystems.
Rosneft has completed the preparatory stage of a comprehensive forest climate project in the Krasnoyarsk Territory. The expected effect of the project is an increase in the absorption of greenhouse gases in the amount of 10 million tons of CO2 equivalent during the project implementation period. This initiative will contribute to reducing the carbon footprint of Vostok Oil, the Company’s largest project in the Krasnoyarsk Territory.
Rosneft’s integrated forest–climatic project is not just the planting of seedlings, but a large-scale work on the creation and development of a new direction of ecosystem services. Currently, a new field of activity is being formed – from deep scientific research to the development of legal frameworks, methodologies for the implementation and evaluation of forest-climatic projects. In addition, the project is aimed at developing competencies and strengthening the potential of forest-climatic projects in Russia, creating business conditions that will help increase the flow of investments in this area.
As part of the preparatory stage of the project, a number of scientific research works were carried out by specialists of St. Petersburg State Forestry University named after S.M. Kirov (SPbGLTU) and Siberian Federal University (SibFU). As a result, scientifically based conclusions were prepared on promising types of forest-climatic projects for the Krasnoyarsk Territory, a mechanism for assessing their carbon and economic efficiency was developed, and recommendations for monitoring projects were given.
The company also took an active part in the development of amendments to forest legislation to create legal conditions for the implementation of forest climate projects in Russia on a systematic basis.
Rosneft pays great attention to the development of the necessary competencies within the forest-climatic field. Together with SPbGLTU, a program of additional specialized training has been prepared. In the period from 2022 to 2023, 150 specialists of the Company were trained. In addition, close cooperation with universities has been organized on the program of personnel training in the forest-climatic direction. For this purpose, special master’s degree programs will be developed at SIBFU, as well as internships at RN-Vankor for senior students of St. Petersburg State Technical University.
Russia’s forest area accounts for about 20% of the world’s forests, and therefore forest conservation and afforestation activities are given priority at the state and corporate levels. More than 80% of the planet’s biodiversity is concentrated in forests.
The integrated forest-climatic project will become an important part of the Company’s activities for forest reproduction and biodiversity conservation. In 2023, Rosneft enterprises took part in various actions: “Green Spring”, “Forest Planting Day”, “Save the forest”, “We clean the world”, the International action “Garden of Memory”.
As a result of the reforestation measures that have been carried out by the Company’s enterprises over the past 5 years, more than 27 million seedlings and saplings of trees have been planted.
Source: rosneft.ru